Recommendation 25

NHSE assesses that sustained increases in capital investment are needed to replace ageing equipment, expand capacity to meet demand, and enable staff to benefit from new technologies.48 However, NHSE told us its investment in technology between 2022–23 and 2024–25 could have been greater had it been able to use underspend against its central budgets for that purpose, but it had to use those underspends instead to mitigate ICBs’ spending deficits.49